19th Sunday Year B - Homily 1

Homily 1 - 2009

Over the years I have interacted with countless people.  We all have.  Of these, some few have stayed in my memory as people who, on meeting them, had the effect of my somehow feeling more alive – consistently.  There were others who had the opposite effect, who seemed somehow to drain life from me.  Most people would lie somewhere in-between, their effect on me being minimal, or basically neutral.  There are different ways of being alive, different degrees.  

Where lies the difference?  That is hard to pin down.   Somehow, some seemed full of life, not so much with physical vitality or vivaciousness or good looks, but with something deeper, less vigorous but strongly nourishing – perhaps wisdom, warmth, even love.  At the other extreme were those who were sometimes full of themselves, sometimes full of nothing much, empty, depressing.  There were those who were alive and life-giving; and those who were effectively lifeless in themselves, and deadening on others.

In the Gospel today, Jesus spoke of people who have eternal life.  What was he getting at?  Eternal life is life that is primarily proper to God – yet something that we can obviously share in in some way.  From what we know of God as revealed by Jesus, the life of God takes shape in loving, in creativity, integrity, etc.

Jesus affirms quite clearly that we can all be drawn into that magnetic field to God's life.  We can learn, we can choose, we can be empowered to love, to be creative and to live in touch with truth.  It can happen now.  What is equally fascinating is that that kind of living obviously continues beyond physical death into the eternity that is the way of God.

Jesus said more.  He said: Whoever believes has eternal life; and went on further calling himself the living bread, and insisting that anyone who eats this bread will live forever.

To believe in Jesus is not so much a matter of beliefs.  It is something truly dynamic.  It is like eating him as we eat our food – savouring him, his message, his vision, his life-style; making him our own; being nourished by his wisdom and his love; open, yearning, to be transformed and empowered to think, to feel and to act like him.

Jesus, of course, is the one come down from heaven, the one who has seen God – the God whom he calls his Father.  To see Jesus is effectively to see God.  Jesus is the revelation, the reflection, the human embodiment of God.  Consequently, to entrust ourselves to him, to commit our lives, to believe in him is our way to become like God.  It is to be alive with the eternal life being lived by God – now, on this side of the grave, and later, on the other side of the grave.

As Jesus said: He will raise us up on the last day – not as disembodied souls, floating about like ghosts, but as the same living, fully human persons that we are, but wonderfully transformed and somehow even divinised.

The key to it all is taking Jesus seriously, trusting him and entrusting ourselves to his vision, to his life-style, to his way, his truth.

Whoever believes has eternal life.